The Lost Steersman (Steerswoman Series)

by Rosemary Kirstein

  Janus had to have light, to swing that sword. And he was doing that.

  But it was funny, because that was all Steffie could see at first. It was like he couldn’t put together anything else. Everything looked like nothing he had ever seen, and he could make no sense of it. But he could make sense of a man, a man with a sword in one hand, swinging it hard and slow and hitting something.

  Then the thing Janus was cutting at sort of came together at the same time it was coming apart, because something fell off it onto the ground, and Steffie thought, Well, that’s a demon arm. Cut right off.

  And all at once Steffie’s brain caught up with his eyes: the wreck of the shed to the left and the house beyond it; the open yard beside the shed, rutted; broken-down wagon half in the raspberry bushes; Janus stepping over a dead demon to get to a live one beyond it.

  Right beyond it. Right there, within sword reach. Just a few feet away, but the demon wasn’t spraying. It was just backing off, slow.

  And past that demon, there were four— no, five— more, and Steffie couldn’t tell which way they were facing, because of them having no faces—

  But what they all were doing was walking away. Not running, just fading back. With Janus hacking at one still in his reach.

  Then off to the right, with their arms pushing back the bushes, two more of the monsters coming out of the woods, crossing into the yard, moving fast— and pretty soon they’d be right behind Janus, where he couldn’t see them, and that’s when Steffie yelled, “Look out!”

  They put up their arms to spray— but not the arms toward Janus, the ones toward Steffie. And he thought: Sound, they go for sound.

  There was a broken bucket at his feet. He grabbed and threw it, past the demons, toward the shed.

  Didn’t even come close. But it hit the ground, it clattered, and the demons sprayed at it instead of him.

  And Steffie ducked back.

  Good. Good. Now what?

  Stay still. Like in the alley, with that first one. Can’t sneak up behind the monsters— they’ve got no behind to them.

  But Janus did. He’d turned when Steffie shouted, and the demons now behind him started coming back. But the others— the ones Janus faced now— they were walking away.

  Weird. That was weird.

  Then the five from behind caught up with Janus and reached out their twiggy hands- -and Janus spun back around, sweeping his sword, and demon hands got broken and jerked back.

  And the demons still didn’t spray.

  But they moved back. They moved away.

  Janus had something in his left hand, maybe a rock— and what a good idea that was. Steffie looked around on the ground nearby. He spotted something: not a rock but half a broken plate. Wait for a chance to use it.

  The two from the bushes had started closing in again as soon as Janus’s back was toward them; then Janus half turned, stepped to one side, and angled himself out—

  And everything stopped.

  Everything living just stopped dead still.

  Only the fire moved, raging huge and wild in the wreck of the shed; and the light from the fire, flicking, weaving, on the ground, on the trees, on demon arms and demon bodies.

  And on Janus, standing like a great dark stone, with the monsters lined up in a half circle before him.

  His sword arm was thrown back, his sword point dropped down: not pointing at any demon— no weapon on the demons at all, unless you counted that rock in his left hand.

  He stayed like that. And the demons stayed. All, all of them standing still …

  And then, slowly, not in any hurry, every demon started moving off.

  Away. Away from Janus.

  And that’s when Steffie knew.

  That’s when it all came clear. It was one thing to hear Rowan say it, a whole other thing to see it himself.

  None of those demons were going to hurt Janus. Not while he was facing them. That was the thing.

  Then Janus moved, and he moved fast: three long steps, sweeping his sword, and he hit the nearest demon straight in the side, and the sword went in, deep. The demon fell, thrashing. And Janus pulled out his sword, changed his grip, stabbed straight down, and twisted and twisted; and the monster flailed once, and died.

  It hadn’t tried to fight back at all. The whole thing was brutal and ugly; and it made Steffie feel good to see that demon die.

  But going after that demon made Janus put his back to the others, and they started coming in again—

  That’s when Steffie figured a flying plate might do some good. He stooped, grabbed, threw, and ran to the right, across the path to another tree. The plate shattered on the ground, one demon raised up its arms and sprayed at it; and another shot right where Steffie had been.

  Made his stomach twist, to see that.

  But maybe the noise did help, because Janus had cut down another demon, and was going after a third one.

  And all the rest walking again, just walking away.

  Because Janus was facing them. Somehow, somehow something about him made them go. Janus didn’t need help.

  Steffie didn’t need to be here. He could leave. He could run, tell people what was happening.

  But … they were already coming. Weren’t they?

  They were supposed to be. And they should be here by now.

  Even Zenna could be almost here by now.

  But they weren’t, nobody was. Which meant something was keeping them. Trouble.

  How many demons could come at Alemeth all at once?

  Plenty, it turned out.

  He heard their voices; he turned; he saw two demons break through the bushes running straight toward him. He stood there with the scythe in one hand and he thought: Well, this is where I die. But those two went right by him like he wasn’t worth the trouble.

  So when another came out the same way, he said, out loud, “Right,” and he got both hands on that scythe, and even though the monster spotted him when he moved and put up its arms to spray, Steffie was faster.

  He put all his weight into the swing and didn’t stop, and that demon was cut right through. Its bottom half took three steps and tumbled, its top half fell on the ground, and the spray it meant to shoot went straight up in the air.

  The swing turned Steffie right around, and he saw Janus again and more demons, maybe a dozen: a whole ring of them all around Janus.

  And Steffie figured, maybe Janus did need help, after all.

  Someone to guard his back.

  Right.

  So when Janus went for one demon, Steffie went for another: just ran out from the trees, straight for the nearest monster, raising that scythe high, swinging it down like an axe.

  That move saved his life, because the demon did spray; but it was stupid— it sprayed high at the blade.

  Which hit it on the top. And went straight down its gullet. And Steffie yanked back, hard, and the thing’s whole body burst toward him, sliced right open from the inside out.

  And another demon sprayed, but Steffie was gone— he’d never moved so fast in his life.

  Across the yard, toward that wagon wreck, then over it, behind it, then flat on the ground and staying still, just holding still and gasping.

  He couldn’t believe what he’d just done; he was scared to the bone, and shaking and sweating, and he said to himself, Steffie, you’re the stupidest man in the world to be here right now. You’ve got more heart than sense, and what you’ve got to do is either lose some heart or get some more sense. Run away. Right.

  But he didn’t. He looked around for his scythe.

  Then he remembered: he’d thrown it when he’d made for the wagon— to give the demons something to shoot at instead of him while he ran.

  Must have worked. He was alive.

  But— bloody fool, what good was he now, with no way to kill demons? What was he here for? All he could do was hide and watch.

  That’s when it came to him that that’s exactly what he was here for.

  To see. And then
to tell.

  People might not believe what Rowan said about Janus; but Steffie was right here seeing it, and they’d believe him. And if he and Janus lived through this, Janus would tell everyone how he’d done it. He would.

  Because even if Janus could keep demons off him, there was no way he could keep Steffie off him.

  So Steffie wormed along on stomach and elbows behind that wagon, and looked around the edge.

  Everything had changed. A demon had Janus.

  One big demon, its body spotted like a wildcat’s, was right up against him, holding him, all its arms wrapped around him … and it had him from the front— how did that happen?

  But now it was the demons on Janus’s left all going away; and demons on his right all coming for him, grabbing at him, cutting their own hands on his sword blade. Then one got it away from him, dropped it. And then the demons on that side were all over Janus, clutching him, pinning him, and Janus fighting, kicking, trying to bash them with that rock in his one free hand.

  Which was when Steffie realized that he’d stood right up behind that wagon. And the demons could see him.

  So could Janus; he spotted Steffie standing there, and he shouted— for the first time yet, he yelled out loud, “No!” And he kept on— struggling, shouting, saying, “Run! Get away! Go, damn you!” And he flung that rock at Steffie, like he was chasing off a dog.

  It hit the wagon, thumped, and fell—

  And every demon there, all of them, went straight for Janus.

  They didn’t kill him; they didn’t spray him. They didn’t even slash him. They grabbed him and held him.

  They dragged him off.

  Away into the woods.

  After a while, Steffie noticed that he was standing in the middle of the yard, and he must have walked there, but he couldn’t remember doing it.

  He just stood; and he felt like it was quiet all around, even though it wasn’t. There was the fire roaring behind him; the demon-voices, getting quieter; and Janus, too, yelling, swearing at those demons, his voice getting farther away. But still Steffie felt like there was something like a silence all around; and he couldn’t move at all, it was that quiet.

  A thought came to him, sort of slowly; and it was that this was the right time for Rowan to show up.

  Then he got a picture in his head: himself, years from now, sitting by the fire at Brewer’s, telling the tale of the demons. And when he got to this part, he would say, Then Rowan showed up, and she thought of a really clever plan, and we went after them demons, just us two, and killed them all and saved Janus, and that’s him sitting right there in the corner.

  But Rowan didn’t show up. She kept on not showing up.

  After a while, other people showed up. But none of them were Rowan, and it was all too late.

  25

  “I shouldn’t have left Alemeth,” Rowan said.

  Steffie winced, and glanced away. “Don’t know. Looked like the thing to do, didn’t it? And you got back as fast as you could …”

  “I wish I’d seen those marks on the beach myself.”

  “Had to be a boat,” Steffie said again, “sure as anything. Marks from some big thing, dragged up on the beach, and the trail them demons left leading right to it.”

  Rowan was pacing the width of the room. “Animals can’t possibly use a boat.” She reached the back door, glowered at it, turned. “Nor could they capture a person and spirit him away,” she said. “They haven’t the wit.”

  Zenna, seated in the wicker chair, her hands lying loose in her lap, did not even lift her head. She said only one word. “Magic.”

  “Of course.”

  “Magic done on animals …” Steffie said. “Like those dragons in Donner Zenna mentioned?”

  “Yes … Jannik, the wizard in Donner, can cause dragons to do his will.” Rowan reached the front door. She wished she had more room to pace or the calmness to do so more slowly. “Apparently,” and she turned again, forced herself to stand still, “apparently some other wizard can do the same with demons. Some unknown wizard. Magic that cannot be attributed to any known wizard. Here I’ve been, all this time, looking in book after book— ” she found she was halfway across the room again; she stopped by the worktable— “when what I ought to have done”— and she threw out her arms— “is simply look around!”

  Steffie startled and eyed her warily; Zenna continued to gaze at her hands. Rowan dropped her arms. “It’s got to be Slado’s doing. It must be.”

  “And Janus mixed up with him and his demons, somehow,” Steffie said. “But if Slado had it in for Janus, why didn’t them demons just kill him once they got him?”

  There was a long silence before either steerswoman stated the obvious. “If Janus knows something about Slado’s doings,” Rowan said, “the wizard will want to know how much. How he learned it. Who else he told it to. Janus is going to be interrogated.”

  Quiet. Outside, rain pattered briefly, then drove sweetly against the high glass windows; a rare sound, and beautiful, Rowan thought, like no other in the world.

  “Won’t do much good, that,” Steffie said eventually. “ ’Cause Janus told nobody else.”

  “Maybe there’s a reason.”

  “What?”

  Rowan had not realized she had spoken out loud. She blinked. “Something someone said to me, once. Someone who knew magic.” Willam, now apprentice to Corvus, trying to justify keeping his own magic secret.

  Maybe it’s something people shouldn’t know, Willam had said, pleading for her understanding. Maybe it would be terrible if anyone else knew … Maybe it’s terrible that I know.

  “And so Janus resigned,” Rowan said, half to herself. To protect us? “No. There is no knowledge of that kind.”

  Steffie was lost. “What? What kind?” Zenna raised her head to study Rowan, her gaze narrowed.

  “There is,” Rowan said slowly, “no knowledge of which the mere knowing constitutes danger. There is never a need to be protected from knowledge itself. It’s action, or inaction, that causes danger. Information is neutral.” She took a few pacing steps again, found herself angry at the uselessness of the activity, forced herself instead to lean back against the worktable. “Janus ought to have spoken. The more the common folk know about wizards, the less they can intimidate us.”

  “He’s alive.” Zenna had been so long silent that Rowan and Steffie both turned to her in surprise. She was sitting erect; she looked from one to the other defiantly. “We have to help him.”

  Rowan drew a breath, released it, found that her grip had tightened on the edge of the table behind her. “Yes. If we can. But we don’t know where to look— ”

  But Zenna was already shoving herself up out of her chair in a lurch that brought her to the worktable without using her crutches. She scrabbled among the papers and charts there, found the one she sought, yanked it from among the others, and set it down, oblivious of the smaller sheets that slid to the floor all around. “There.” She stabbed at the chart with a pointing finger.

  SHIPS VANISH. A new notation. Rowan listened, speechless, as Zenna explained, rapidly and concisely.

  When she finished, Rowan stood gazing blindly at the chart, very still, the spread fingers of both hands bracketing the notation. “That’s where Janus landed after the shipwreck,” she said. “It must be. That’s where he learned about demons. That’s where he’s been sailing to”— her hands became fists— “in his copper-bottomed boat.”

  “And that’s where we have to go.”

  “Not we, Zenna. Me.”

  Steffie was making abortive attempts at speech; both women ignored him. “We,” Zenna said. “I’m a better sailor than you are, Rowan. You know that. I was raised on the sea.”

  “But— ” Steffie managed.

  “Zenna, have you seen Janus’s boat?”

  “From a distance. Sloop-rigged but too broad in the beam. Fully loaded, and with that copper hull, she should wallow like a cow in a swamp. You’ll need sharp sailing to keep
her right.”

  “But, but— ”

  Rowan remained adamant. “It won’t be easy. But I can manage.”

  “It will be easy, because there will be two of us.”

  “Zenna, no.”

  “Why not?” Then she stopped short, straightened, answered her own question. “All right— I know why not. But you’re wrong. Even with one leg, I can be useful. I can hold a tiller. I can chart a course. I can cook. Skies above, Rowan, I know I’m better at that than you are!”

  “Can you handle the boat alone?”

  “There will be two of us— ”

  “Can you handle it,” Rowan asked again, “alone?”

  Silence. Then, “I won’t need to.”

  Rowan felt a grim smile on her own face. “Possibilities,” she said, “are two ”

  Bracing herself awkwardly against the table, Zenna glared up at her friend. “I’m willing to take that chance,” she said forcefully.

  Rowan said very quietly, “I am not. It’s not your choice. Zenna, Slado is the most powerful wizard in the world. I have no idea what I’ll find when I go there. I don’t know what I’m getting into, and I don’t know if I’ll come out of it alive. But I will not allow you to become stranded, alone, on a boat you can’t sail— right in Slado’s shadow. I go alone.”

  No steerswoman could hide from the truth. Zenna surrendered. “Then I’ll help you here. Come on.” She pushed off from the table and took a lurching step toward the hearth and her crutches.

  Steffie finally managed to interject, “Hey!”

  Both women turned to look at him. The sudden attention flustered him, but after some sputtering he got out, “I’ve got something to say.”

  “Say it,” Rowan said, and she went to the coat hooks, retrieved Zenna’s cloak and her own.

  “Well, well, first off, it’s this. Janus, and all. I mean”— he turned to Zenna— “I know how you feel about him, lady, and I’m sorry, but”— and he turned to Rowan— “I know how you feel about him, too, and I’m thinking it’s a lot like how I feel about him— and if it was Janus being here brought them demons to kill people, and him never warning anyone about it, and a wizard’s got him now, then I say serves him right. Why is it you want to go sailing off to rescue him?”